subject: Beaten By Three Snail [print this page] When I found that a remarkable and very beautifully colored creature inhabited the conch shell and that in addition it made exceedingly delicious soup, my pain at its lack of accumulative environmental sound memory became alleviated. As a boy, when I began a collection of shells, I gave no more thought to the owners and maker than I did to the personality of the Knight: who had worn the suits of armor in museum cases. I hardly put them in that category that fossils held in medieval phillosophy-lusus naturae, acts of God, crystalline precipitates-but nevertheless they held places nearer my minerals than my insects. One day I lay flat in my glass-bottomed boat drifting slowly across Castle Harbot to the north of Nonsuch. I was on the lookout for a reef favorable for diving, but suddenly my eye caught a well-marked trail ploughed through eelgrass four fathoms down. At the end of the furrow was a giant conch. We quickly heaved over the anchor and rigged the diving helmet. When I dropped down the ladder and began scouting around the eelgrass I found it was far from easy to locate the great shells. Their trails were lost in the low horizontal perspective and there were many small, dead heads of coral, which I picked up by mistake. At last, I located one and found it extremely heavy even under water. When I turned it over, the huge snail withdrew and rather amazingly squeezed out a bubble of air, which, like a levitating pearl, rose slowly through the water. I tucked the creature under my arm and made for the ladder when I saw a second conch and put this beneath the other arm. As I was putting my foot on the lowest rung the surge threw me backward and I stepped inadvertently upon a third conch, the projections of which were so unpleasant that I dropped all three. Miser-like, gathering them up again, I began a one-sided ascent by means of feet, one knee and two fingers, with the trio clutched to me. The moment the conchs sensed one another they either blamed their present predicament upon each other, or the courage of the three together gave them courage to emerge from their shells and attack me. I know exactly how the Spartan youth felt with his irate fox, only I lacked the courage of that Greek Boy Scout and when my muscular snails began hacking at me I dropped them all. Again I tried and again I failed, for the punishing power of their sharp operculum was that of a clamp of a sabretoothed tiger-their strength and activity were marvellous, and they tore through bathing suit and skin. Finally I succumbed to the humiliation of being beaten by three snails and carried them gingerly up one at a time.
